Naruto dreamed about Sasuke that night. He stood in the sunlight, cherry blossoms were blowing in the wind. He walked closer. When Naruto woke up to the alarm clock he was sweating. He changed into his school uniform and left the room without making his bed.
"Wait, Naruto!" it was Lee.
"Hurray" Naruto thought, he turned around and Lee ran up to him.
"Heading for breakfast?" Naruto had forgotten about that, the only thing he could think about was yesterday.
"You go ahead, I'm not that hungry... " and he wasn't lying this time. It felt like he had butterflies in his stomach and he didn't know if it was good or bad.
"You sure?" Lee looked at him with concern in his eyes.
"Yeah" Naruto said with a reassuring smile.
He walked fast to the classroom because he absolutely did not want to come late to his first lesson. When he arrived he was almost twenty minutes too early. Naruto couldn't remember the last time he came too early to a lesson. He always came late in his past school, but now it almost felt like he would lose everything if he was late even once in a year. But why did he bother to come this early this time? Was it because he wanted to make a good first-impression to the teacher? No, not that. It must have been because of...
"Sasuke." Naruto got startled and put his hand over his mouth. He hoped that no one heard that. He could feel his heart starting to pump faster as he thought about him. Sasuke could arrive anytime now. They did go in the same class. That's what Sasuke said. Naruto waited and waited. The long minutes passed and each time he heard footsteps his eyes automatically moved to that direction. It wasn't Sasuke. He sighed. After a while students in his class started to arrive. They were carrying books and school computers. His classmates were many and the small area in front of the classroom door started to get crowded. No one greeted Naruto, except for one person.
"Hi, you're the new kid right?"
"Ugh, why does everyone call me the new kid?"
Naruto looked up at the boy who had spoken. He had black hair in a ponytail. He looked a bit bored.
"Yeah, I'm Naruto."
"Shikamaru," the boy said. He turned around and waved to someone but Naruto didn't see to whom. A brown haired boy walked up to them. Naruto recognised him immediately.
"This is Naruto. Naruto this is Kiba-"
"We've met" said Kiba with a wink. Naruto blushed a little. Why did he wink all the time? Maybe it was just his thing. To wink at people.
"So, how's the first day of school so far, friend?" Kiba asked him.
Naruto got startled.
"Did you call me friend?"
"Hey, you don't need to accept my friendship if you don't want to. I'm just trying to be nice! But you'll need a friend if you're gonna survive here."
Naruto smiled.
"Yeah I suppose" Maybe if he accepted Kibas friendship he could get closer to Sasuke... What was he thinking?! It wasn't like he liked him or anything! He was just good looking.
Speak of the devil... Sasuke walked up to them. His hair was laying so beautifully over his face as his face looked so neutral. His eyes looked like the neverending space. Naruto's heart started racing. "Act cool Naruto!" He thought.
"Hello Sasuke!" Sasuke stopped, there was an awkward silence. "Stupid, why did I have to say that!? He doesn't even know my name!"
"Who are you and how do you know my name?" Sasuke looked between Kiba and Shikamaru uncertainty.
"It's the guy from yesterday, don't you remember?" Kiba said amused.
"Oh, yeah now I do! It's the new kid!" Sasuke said with a smirk.
"Finally, Kakashi-sensei´s here," said Shikamaru.
Naruto hadn't even noticed that the lesson had started some time ago. The teacher was more than fifteen minutes late. He had grey hair but didn't look old, well of what you could see of his face anyways, he wore a mask that covered half of his face.
"Sorry for letting you wait, students! My coffee machine broke so I had to go to starbucks!"
Everyone sighed irritatedly.
"Yeah sure, Kaki"
"How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that, Inuzuka?"
Kakashi opened the door to the classroom and the students walked in. When Naruto was about to do so, Kakashi stopped him.
"Attention, everyone! We have a new student here! Why don't you introduce yourself, Naruto."
Naruto gulped. Everyone looked at him. He didn't even dare to look at Sasuke.
"H-hello everyone, my name is Naruto Uzumaki." The silence afterwards was haunting.
"You can take a seat besides... Sakura" Kakashi said.
"Right" Naruto walked down the classroom to the back where Sakura sat besides a window. She smiled at him, but he didn't smile back.
"Hi again, Naruto!"
"Hi." He looked around the classroom. Kiba sat besides Sasuke, also at the back but on the other side. So technically Naruto sat besides Sasuke... almost. Naruto turned his eyes slowly to Sasuke and realized that Sasuke had been staring at him the whole time. Naruto quickly looked down at his bench. Kakashi saw them both. He smirked under his mask.
"Today, we are gonna write poetry!" Kakashi fastly picked up a chalk and wrote with incredible speed the word "poetry" on the chalkboard. Some groaned.
"Kakashi-sensei... can't we just have a real lesson for once? It feels like we haven't learned anythi-"
Kakashi threw the chalk at the kid who was speaking. It hit his head before anyone even noticed that he had thrown it.
"Ouch!"
"Nobody shall disrespect my teaching!" Kakashi looked very serious compared to just a second ago. "What do you call a real lesson, huh? A meaningless hour where everyone is told to read fifty pages of total nonsense and then answer questions about it?" He looked down and smirked. "A normal teacher would do just what they were told in teacher school. But I won't do that, because I want you all to remember what you did in school and not just think about it as some years wasted!"
Naruto couldn't believe his ears. What the hell was this man babbling about? Anyhow, Kakashi was not like any other teacher, that was for sure...
"Alright, enough rambling! Pick up your pencils and start writing! You can write any kind of poetry you like, be creative. The winner will get a free-sandwich ticket at the cafeteria!"
Kiba opened up his laptop and Kakashi gasped.
"You can't use your laptops! That is forbidden!"
"Fine I won't-"
"Get to the floor and do five push-ups!"
"But Sensei I-"
"I changed my mind! Do ten!"
"Fine!"
Kiba stepped out of his chair and got down on the floor and did ten push-ups. Kakashi was pleased.
"Yes... good...HEY! What are you all looking at! Start writing, NOW!"
Everyone did as he said immediately, except for Naruto. He didn't have any supplies.
"Sensei...? I don't have any paper and pen."
"Oh! You're right, my bad!"
Kakashi searched around in drawers and took out a pencil and a paper sheet. He walked down to Naruto's bench with it, but before he gave it to him he looked at him deeply in the eyes and said:
"Naruto... I want you to do your best, okay?" He put the paper and pencil in front of Naruto and walked back to his desk. Naruto looked at the blank paper sheet in front of him. Kakashi was a very special teacher, but Naruto couldn't tell whether he was serious or joking. Naruto sighed and wrote a title with crooked letters above the top line on the paper sheet: "Believe it."
Naruto sat with that title during the majority of the lesson without coming up with something to write below. He peeked Sakura's poem. She had written pages by now! She looked emotional as she wrote. Suddenly, a teardrop fell from her eye and landed on the paper. Naruto got shocked and although he didn't like her, his brain told him to intervene anyways.
"Sakura?" he whispered carefully. She looked up at him with a surprised face. She blinked away the tears and tried to smile, but it was obvious that she was crying.
"Are you okay?"
She shook her head and then she hugged Naruto. Naruto felt uncomfortable for a second, but then he hugged her back. Was this how it felt to console someone, make them feel better? Naruto felt better about himself when he realized that, even though he had no idea why Sakura was crying. "And I used to be such a bad guy to hang out with…"
Sakura stopped hugging him.
"Thanks Naruto, it means a lot. You're a good guy."
Naruto smiled. He liked the thought of that.
"Time's up! Drop your pens!" shouted Kakashi all of sudden. He looked around the classroom with a pleased face. "Now, this is what I call a good lesson! I told you all to drop your pens but you still haven't because you can't stop writing!"
The sound of pencils writing on paper slowly faded away. At the end, there was only one pencil left and it was writing loudly. Everyone turned back and looked at Kiba who was writing intensively. Kiba looked up.
"Wha… what are y'all looking at?!"
Everyone started to laugh, except for Kakashi.
"Silence! I think that Kiba is writing something exceptional. Would mind sharing your poem with us, Kiba?"
"No, not at all!"
Kiba stood up from his chair and cleared his throat.
"I love my puppy. His name is Akamaru. He is the cutest puppy in the world. Akamaru makes me happy. I want to hug him!"
The whole classroom got silent. Kiba still looked happy.
"What do you think?"
"I…" Kakashi blinked away the tears coming from his eyes. "I LOVE it! Kiba, here's your price for getting to the 1st place!"
Kiba gasped. Sakura slammed her palm on her desk.
"You haven't even looked at the other poems and still you're letting Kiba win?!"
"Class is over! Good job everyone!"
Later that day when Naruto was walking back to his dorm, he met Sakura on his way there.
"Sakura! How are you?"
"I'm good, Naruto… Hey, don't tell anyone about what happened in Kakashi's lesson today, alright?"
"You mean… that you were crying?"
"Yeah… I assume you wanna know why I did?" Sakura said looking down at her feet.
"Actually, yeah."
"It's because I…" she started crying again. "I wrote about my life's biggest crush ever!"
She stuttered as she said this, her face was all red. Naruto almost felt disappointment. Crying over a little crush? Who did that?
"Do you have a crush, Naruto?"
"I mean, I- erm. Yeah."
"Who is it? Come on, don't be shy."
"Heheh erm, eh..."
"Is it Sasuke?"
Naruto started to panic a little.
"How did you-"
"I know you've been giving him the eye."
Naruto couldn't believe it. "Shit, am I that obvious?"
"Okay, congratulations, you're right. But don't tell anyone! You'll keep my secret and I'll keep yours."
"Deal!" Sakura said with a smirk. Naruto sighed in relief. They split up and went back to their dorms.
When Sakura got to her room she picked up her pink diary and started writing:
Dear diary! Guess what. Naruto likes Sasuke, he said it himself! But I'm not gonna lose to a loser like him! Sasuke will be MINE! I will destroy that little yellow-haired prick!
-xoxo Sakura.
